site.btaPresident Challenges Constitutionality of Protection Bureau Status

ESD 17:23:01 11-03-2021
ZH1723ES.118
118 POLITICS - PRESIDENT - CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

President Challenges Constitutionality
of Protection Bureau Status as Independent Unit
under Prosecutor General


Sofia, March 11 (BTA) - President Rumen Radev Thursday petitioned the Constitutional Court about provisions of the Judicial System Act and the Act on Protection of Persons Threatened in Connection with Criminal Proceedings, which establish the Protection Bureau as an independent organizational unit under the Prosecutor General, Radev's Press Secretariat said.

The President argues that in the last few years, successive amendments to the Act on Protection of Persons Threatened in Connection with Criminal Proceedings have concentrated in the Prosecutor General all the key functions of leadership, control and activity of the Protection Bureau, which runs against the constitutional principle of the separation of powers. In this way the powers of the prosecution service and the Prosecutor General enshrined in the Constitution are exceeded, Radev says.

The President notes that the Constitution grants the judiciary an independent status which, however, can be used solely in the performance of the constitutional functions of the court, the prosecutors and the investigators. This independence should not be used in performing any other tasks, according to the President.

By assigning police powers to the Protection Bureau staff and placing the Bureau within the prosecution service under the Prosecutor General's leadership, the legislature hampers the exercise of citizen control of police powers which can affect essential values such as human life and health, freedom and the private life of persons, says Radev. He argues that the Prosecutor General cannot simultaneously head the Bureau and supervise the legality of its actions because he would be supervising the legality of his own actions. LN/DD